On 18/03/13 at 14:00 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 01:30:28PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> >
> > At least for debian-devel-french@, I don't think that we advertise the
> > possibility to ask questions there.
>
> Just start a discussion there, get a new wording and then ask listmasters
> to change it.
> Probably this update could benefit of having the list description in both
> English and French.
Yes, that was the idea.
> > I'm not sure we need another list for that, given the low traffic (and
> > spanish looks similar)
>
> I meant new lists for other languages that don't have a list yet (when a group
> of people speaking that language ask for it, of course).
>
>
> > > Mentoring works better when the mentor and the mentee are speaking in their
> > > natives languages, but ultimately to participate in Debian people need a
> > > minimal knowledge of written English...
> >
> > Sure, but making one's first steps in Debian is also very difficult. So
> > I think that every possible way to simplify that first step is a good
> > thing.
> >
> > So, if I'm not elected, I will probably:
> > - see if it's considered OK to direct french contributors to
> > debian-devel-french@ (I guess it will be OK)
> > - see if a few french contributors besides me would agree to answer
> > questions on IRC, and create #-mentors-fr if that's the case
> > (#-devel-fr is quite active, so it's better not to add more "noise"
> > there)
> > - advertise this (blog, packaging tutorial, etc.)
> > - provide feedback to the project after a few weeks/months, so that
> > others can possibly make the same move
> >
> > This sounds like a rather simple step to make, hence my "low-hanging
> > fruit" qualifier.
>
> I see, it is not that easy. To sustain a mentoring community for a long time,
> it needs plenty of people around it. In Debian we currently struggle to keep
> our global community in English going running because the lack of mentors.
> That's why I exceptical about communities per language taking off.
I cannot guarantee that it will be successful. But we will never know if
we don't try. Also, it's typically something that would be quite
harmless to the project if it failed (if we reuse an existing mailing list,
it's just about creating an IRC channel).
> Some people pushed for a similar experiment to the one you describe some years
> ago in Spanish, they even added a round of talks:
> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianSpanish/Devel/IRCTalks
>
> But despite being a small group of people working a lot on it and the Spanish
> speaking community being big, it didn't last long.
[ after seeking clarification: it didn't last long because there were
not enough people willing to do the mentoring ]
So it means that there's actually some demand for this, which is great.
Lucas